NASA Exec Says, 'Boldly Go!'

SAN JOSE, Calif. — "The space community doesn't think big enough," said Simon P. "Pete" Worden, the director of NASA's Ames Research Center in a keynote address.

He proceeded to tell a small but passionate band of devotees at the New Space event they should work on travel outside our solar system, find life and settle there -- and in the process harness biotechnology.

"We ought to be thinking about the nearby stars, not just boring places like the moon and Mars. My favorite target is Alpha Centauri," Worden said, showing pictures of its two main stars, one bigger and one smaller than our sun.

"It's a long way, but not unbelievably long, about 300,000 astronomical units." (One astronomical unit is about 150 million kilometers.)

In a 1988 book, engineer Louis Freidman proposed the concept of a solar sail to make such a trip. Worden said an anti-proton pulse could propel space travel at speeds up to one-twentieth of the speed of light, making it possible to complete the journey to the nearest star system in 20 years.

More recently, Harold White at the Johnson Space Center developed theoretical models for flying faster than the speed of light. "Some of the things that used to be laughed at are maybe not so strange after all," said Worden.

Researchers at Ames are discussing with commercial space companies ways to send a so-called nano-satellite to Alpha Centauri in the search for life, according to Worden.

Past missions in our solar system have shown space communications are viable under difficult conditions. When Gallileo's main antenna broke, NASA still found ways to get data rates of "hundreds of bits" per second, he said.

"We are looking at inflatable antennas for getting kilobits per second from Jupiter, so communications in deep space is quite feasible -- you won't get megabytes, but we have shown you can do cool science with small databases."

@wnderer raises an important point - that eventually our earth will cease to exist and that humanity needs an exit plan if it is to survive. While the timeframe is much greater than the total time than humans have lived on earth to date, it is a topic that eventually will need to be addressed.

Within this century, I'd think that the advances in robotics and technology make remote exploration of other solar systems the only practical approach. Not only can they send back data at the speed of light but also the spacecraft is spared the need to carry life support and food and provide sufficient space for human beings. Exploration of the moon is viable because the trips are relatively short; expecting someone to remain healthy for a 20 year trip is not.

This is really something as Moon and Mars are the newest edition to the boring destinations to go to. This is when NASA is planning a manned Mars mission and China is on the same lines planning Moon and Mars voyage.

One more problem (aside from mass increas and enormous energy required) is, when you travel in near lightspeed, every free-floating space particles become high-energy beam against the space ship. It could be protected by thick foward-facing shiled, but of course it increases space ship mass and will require even more energy to accelarate to near lightspeed.

Then, when getting to your destination, we must slow down. We need same amount of energy to decelarate to "normal" speed. So the space ship must acceralate to near lightspeed from full-tank, use only (about) half of fuel/propelant on board.

My goal for the space program would be to double the number of people living in space every 50 years. 12 people by 2050, 24 by 2100, 1 trillion by the year 4000. Then start sending the generation ships to the stars. Humanities (perhaps non-human) descendents cover the entire galaxy in 65 million years. That's only 4% of the years of habitability left for the Earth. The same amount of time since the dinosaurs went extinct. It also calls into question the existence of extra-terrestrial life. If intelligent life has been in the galaxy for 100 million years, they should not be hard to find.

@Wnderer: I see your point. I don?t understand why NASA exec thinks Moon is a boring place to be. NASA should build an observatory there, maintaining the Hubble is costlier than maintaining an observatory on the Moon.

If NASA has such a big budget to fund concepts like solar sail and faster than light travel, then why not? As far as we know, the planet we live on will cease to support this life in 1500 years or so, if the current rate of deterioration continues. For this we must be developing time travelling portals and near light speed for continuation of our life on other planets. NASA is really embarking on a tight budgeted mission.

@Prabakhar, thanks for reminding me how old I am!! I remember, at 13, looking up at the moon in 1969 and wondering if I would ever be able to go there, and thinking it was probably quite likely. Alas, the human race seems more focussed on pulling each other apart than pulling together to accomplish something like that.